BASL circles July 4 on calendar for junior return target date

THE Bendigo Amateur Soccer League is setting its sights on a July 4 start for its junior season.

The BASL's July 4 target date follows the state government's announcement on Sunday as part of its easing of coronavirus restrictions that 18-and-under sport can resume full contact training and competition from next Monday.

The July 4 date would not only give players two weeks of full training in the lead-up to a season start, but also a window for clubs to register players and prepare for the return of competition.

"We had previously targeted June 28 as a possibility for the juniors, but over the past week in discussion with our clubs, they felt more comfortable for a week later, which lands on July 4," BASL president Aaron Shooter said on Tuesday.

A July 4 start would fall in the middle of the term two school holidays, which would normally be a break for junior soccer.

"The initial feedback we've had (regarding starting in school holidays) is that while there may be people who want to travel away, given the unusual circumstances we've had this is the first opportunity we've got to do something for the juniors and would allow for some extra games," Shooter said.

"We'll obviously be understanding if teams won't be able to participate on that weekend, but we want to set a date to work towards."

While the BASL has earmarked July 4 as its return date for its junior competition, it still has to work through the logistics of its senior divisions, which it had initially hoped could also start the same weekend.

However, the state government's announcement at the weekend doesn't allow for full contact senior sport training to begin until July 13 and competition to start until July 20.

With July 20 a Monday, the first weekend the BASL could look to begin its senior competition is over July 25-26.

"These new parameters announced at the weekend pushes back a few weeks from what we were originally looking at for our seniors, so we will need to meet and discuss with our clubs what that means," Shooter said.

"What I can say though is we've had a strong indication from the majority of senior clubs that they are willing to take part in the season that we proposed a couple of weeks ago, so we'll need to re-establish that commitment from the clubs based on the new dates.

"What the new dates do is put a bit of pressure on us at the back end of the season.

"What we had previously determined as a season length (based on a July 4 start) would have had us wrapped up clear of any summer sport starting, but adding some extra weeks to that means we're going to start to crash into those dates.

"So we'll have to see how the summer sports react to that. We've got access to enough facilities that don't share with other codes to be able to run a bit later, but we're mindful that we have players who play both winter and summer sport.

"We need to talk to the clubs about that and re-jig the calendar, so there's still a bit of work to be done."

The BASL's initial senior plan was to start on July 4 and complete a 14-round championship on the first or second weekend of October with possibly a shortened two weeks of finals.

Using July 25 as a potential start date and October 11 (second weekend of October) as the finish of the championship would allow 12 rounds of matches.

"Now we'll look at things like do we fixture a set one round competition in terms of everyone plays each once, or do we set a fixed number of rounds and those extra rounds where you may play someone a second time is just luck of the draw... obviously, that's not good for equity, but it gives people more football and that's the discussion we need to have with the clubs," Shooter said.

The only club that has indicated it won't be fielding any BASL teams this year is Shepparton after withdrawing last week.

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